jai Ho, oh no!

An ex army officer Jai (Salman) is out on the streets with zero tolerance to injustice which surely gets tested ever so often, by all the bad, bad things that are inflicted by harbingers of evil and the stoic indifference of the majority. A bullet point narrative including a physically-challenged girl (Genelia D’Souza) committing suicide, an infant being kidnapped, a child seeking alms at a traffic signal, the lewd caller - all happen before him. With the ease of a main stream film hero, grown beyond his image, Jai arrives at every evil nukkad, as a brawl filled alternative. We have two corrupt police officers (Aditya Pancholi and Sharad Kapoor) who look the other way and it is only the corrective intervention of the protagonist that saves the day.

Jai’s mom (Nadira Babbar) is the aggressive woman in the neighbourhood. Her son’s muscle power obviously rubs off in the gait and spirit of this Maa who is willing to take on the bad guys herself. The lady with the golden heart, however, has not excused her daughter Gita (Tabu) for marrying Rehan (Mahesh Thakur). Jai is supported by two friends (Ashmit Patel and Yash Tonk). In the neighbourhood is Pinky (debutant Daisy Shah – a disaster) who is also one of the incidental victims of societal evil on one hand and the antidote charm on the other.

Representing evil is the local home minister Dasarath Singh (Danny) and members of the family which includes his daughter (Sana Khan), son-in-law (Mukul Dev) and other evil hangers on. The narrative leads to a conflict of epic proportions between good and evil. Smuggled into this muscle flexing dialectic response is the philosophy that if each citizen could help three people in need, the cascading effect could establish Ram Rajya. Obviously the mantra fails the ‘check your premises’ test of Ayn Rand. We are told aam aadmi sota hua sher hai. We end up concluding that is sheher mein sab sote hain. Unfortunately he is in the Rip Van winkle mode. In passing it is also pointed out that aam aadmi is socially hesitant to be socially pro active. No effort is made to crack the contradiction.

If Sohail Khan in effect was examining the nature of individual consciousness (and unconsciousness) and is making a docu statement then the effort to bring together disparate strands of life and knit a harmonious whole into this loud, grotesque, anarchical, bloody, dirty, foul and filth filled state would be worth the effort.

You know what to except from a Salman starrer and that is doled out a plenty. Of the cast, Salman apart from the huge assembly of performers in semi retirement bring in their rusted best.

It is a script that is audaciously committed to Salman and the school of cinema he sells. The final fixture when we have the villain and the hero tearing their shirts and exhibiting their torso gets beyond the realm of fictional acceptance and the audience is silenced in their own expectations.

Finally the film is clearly a statement from the film maker and to borrow from the film it seems to suggest: Apna kaam banta, baad mein jaye janta.